


Calibration

by galacticproportions



Series: Siyak Base [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Finntrospection, Inadvertant Facial, M/M, New Relationship, Oral Sex, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:37:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13590204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: New doubts, new decisions, new pleasures, and the work and play of getting to know each other. Also, sex in a hangar.





	Calibration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts), [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).



> Who's in the mood for some good old-fashioned hangar sex? *raises hand*
> 
> This can be read in continuity with "Always the Next Morning" but I don't think you need to have read that to enjoy this. It's for my buddies Orchis and Gloss, whom I hope will enjoy it especially.

Finn fills two bowls with algae pudding, hesitates, puts one down, adds a handful of scrub berries to the one in his hand and carrageen salt to both, picks up the other one again, puts them both down, pockets a couple of spoons, picks the bowls up a third time, and slopes out of the mess hall, ignoring what might be an invitation to sit down. The long, reddish light of the distant sun and the looming gas giant stretches his shadow out behind him, thin and trembling, as he crosses the packed and scored ground of the former shipyard. 

The dorms and mess and infirmary are clustered on the morning side of the base, and the manufactories and hangars on the evening side. Inside the hangar, Rose has rigged worklights with yellow-white and blue-white gels for people who miss their suns, and a yellow worklight is beaming in one corner. Finn goes there. The shadows here are sharper and deeper where they fall, and binary chortles, warbles and occasional expletive blatts echo off the corrugated metal ceiling high above. So, though more softly, does Poe's voice when he says, “Try that sequence again, Beeb, we need more precision.” 

BB-8 makes the sound that would, in a human—or at least a human who grew up practicing facial expressions—be accompanied by an eye-roll. “Hey,” Finn calls out, figuring that now's as good a time as any to interrupt, and Poe steps out of the shadow, the worklight throwing him briefly into silhouette. “Finn!” he says, sounding as pleased as he always does. “Did I tell you I was here?” 

“I figured you'd be here.” The X-wings arrived at midday, three flown by the surviving members of Black Squadron and seven more on a carrier from a remote Republic outpost. They spent the early afternoon debriefing and crying, while Finn and Connix assessed the rest of the materiel and then moved on to assessing recent dispatches and communiques in light of this new development. He hasn't seen Poe for hours, but where would he be but here? “I brought dinner.” 

“Oh, no way!” Poe moves again, closes the distance, looks down at the bowls in Finn's hands, and looks up with a soft, surprised face. “You put berries on mine.”

“Yeah, I remembered.” Finn can't stand the sour-solvent taste of the scrub berries and doesn't mind the taste of the plain algae—it's a different strain than the one they fed 'troopers, but the blandness is familiar and soothing.

They sit under the wing to eat, cross-legged, knees touching, while the droid runs tests and calibrations above. “Black One had some...modifications,” Poe explains. “BB-8 was keyed into those, so they have to readjust for this one, it's pretty much out-of-the-box.”

“Nice to have new ships to fly, though,” Finn offers. It's nice to have ships at all, if “nice” is the word. “Were you thinking about that request for air support from Perenesse?”

“Yeah. We can actually do it now, we have enough in-atmo craft.” Perenesse is in the Mid-Rim, an ore-rich planet similar to what Hays Minor once was, and a prime target for First Order exploitation now that Resistance forces are depleted. Their leaders are talking surrender, but there's a growing opposition that's sounding more and more ready for open rebellion.

“Do we have enough people?”

Poe puts down his bowl down and counts on his fingers. “Jess, Snap, Karé. C'ai and Tarfia--”

“Tarfia's ready?”

“C'ai says she is, and I trust them. Three Academy dropouts that got here before you did. Me. Nien Nunb and those two other Sullustan pilots that just came on.”

“You,” Finn says, not quite a question. Of course: why else would BB-8 be checking the interface?

Poe looks at his hands as though he expects to find a smear of pudding on them. “Well. Maybe. I guess that's part of what we'll decide tonight.” They've called a meeting of the command team for 1940—rotations here are around 20 hours, which for someone raised on ship's time makes everything feel a little breathless.

When Pava and Kun and Wexley buzzed Siyak base, they did so in missing pilot formation, leaving spaces where Poe's X-wing and Muran's would have ridden: a way of saying, for eyes that could see, who they were. Finn had noted the asymmetry but hadn't been able to read it, and it was Nien Nunb, whose Sullustani Finn is slowly learning to understand if not to speak, who filled him in. He's also learning the elderly pilot's body language: a mixture, today, of relief and sorrow. Nien's flown against the odds with two generations of fighters, watched the ranks thin out, and fill up, and thin out again.

Finn's conscious mind has pretty well weaned itself off the idea, literally beaten (and mindformed and injected and indoctrinated) into him, that any lives matter more than any others based solely on their status in a hierarchy. And he knows better than to translate his own, particular desire that Poe remain safe into any kind of policy or strategy. But the kind of gap that Poe's death would leave if he were shot down over Perenesse is a larger and more crippling one than someone else’s might: despite his and others' efforts to make the chain of command into more of a web, people look to him to lead, and there are things he has in hand that no one else could do as well.

Finn knows all this, knows that Poe wants most to be where he’s needed most. Knows too that he’s restless, spoiling for action: they’ve talked about it often enough, in public and in private, how the slow work of building alliances and placing operatives and gathering resources, which he’s good at and which is necessary before they can make a move, is wearing on him and on the others among them who used to be able to carry out a quick plan in a straight line.

“It’d feel good,” Poe says, as if he’s been following Finn’s thoughts. “Something solid _.  _ Like, you shoot a TIE out of the sky, that’s one TIE pilot that’ll never shoot any of ours again.” He makes a face like he's running his tongue over his teeth. “Man, that algae always makes my mouth feel gummy—Oh!” The gumminess response is replaced by a smile and a wriggle as Poe gropes for something in his trousers pocket. “I meant to share these with you anyway. Came in with the last food drop from my dad.” He unwraps a small packet and hands Finn a round, golden-brown object about the size of a detonator button but much stickier.

“Is this to eat?” Two-thirds of the time, when Poe hands him something, that's what it is. (“You gotta try this.”) The rest of the time is divided pretty evenly between datapads and their bottle of lube, which thus far they’ve mostly used for handjobs--the lack of time and the lack of privacy aren’t conducive to the kinds of sex you can’t scramble away from quickly--but Finn is ever hopeful. He’s also willing to accept the conversational redirection: it doesn’t make sense to talk about this much more until they have input from the rest of the command team, and for someone who likes to go fast, Poe can get really stubborn if you try to push him to talk about things before he's ready.

“Yeah, it's candied spiceroot slices from Yavin. Makes your breath smell nice, and they should help with the flatulence factor too.” It's true that in humans and a few other species the algae can have an odoriferous digestive effect, while the Abednedo among their forces claim it's just like what Clan-Mama used to scrape off the cavern walls. “They're sweet, definitely. Kes sent a bunch, but nobody else here seems to like them.”

“What makes you think I will?” Finn pops the thing into his mouth just before Poe can snatch it back. This is a new pleasure, being able to guess what he'll do in a way that Finn can use to be playful, like this, or to care for Poe, when he allows it—not often—or even to think what he  _ would  _ say if he  _ were  _ there, so that Finn can have that little extra....it's not an edge. It's the opposite of an edge, it's  _ flow,  _ the sense that things are going just a little bit better, that he's thinking afresh, able to see more.

Also, the flail from his sitting position brings Poe into an elbowy sprawl across Finn's lap, his ass into tempting palm-reach. Finn grabs it. It's barely a decision, but unlike some of his reflexes, this feels good and right even in retrospect—not that he has that long to retrospect about it, with Poe squirming against his touch, then scrambling up to kneel in front of him and kiss him.

Finn loves kissing, even when there's a hint of those gross sour berries under the spiceroot taste on Poe's tongue, even at a weird angle with too much space between them. “Stand up with me,” he suggests when his back starts to cramp—not enough, though, to keep him from rising easily, reaching for Poe's hands to pull him along too.

“Rather lie down,” Poe mumbles into his neck.

“Too hard to do it that way.”

“Do what,” Poe grins, into it, very obviously into it, very close to Finn's face, then kissing him again too deeply for any immediate answer. Finn both does and doesn't understand how they got here, so able to be so needy so very fast, and then where do you start from? How far back? Crait, D'Qar, the Finalizer? Their second slow approach to one another or their first swift, bright swing into orbit together? Poe being born on Yavin 4 and then, nine years later, a baby whose earliest name is lost being born somewhere else? The first Rebellion, the first Empire? The first person who stretched out a hand to feel the flow of the Force and then, instead of thinking  _ this is in me, here I am in this,  _ thought  _ this is something I can master? _

The questions spinning in his head maybe make his mouth go slack for a second but they don't keep him from kissing back and grinding forward, rotating them so that Poe can prop his shoulders against the body of the X-wing. He got good at that--mind and body running parallel--when he was still wearing the white armor, but this is a much better use of it.  “Blow you, obviously,” he gets his mouth free to say, then dips back in for another kiss, then another.  _ Don't want to leave,  _ he thinks. Maybe he's less clearheaded than he assumed, plans and feelings blurring into each other. “Right here, huh?” Poe's asking. “You sure?”

“'Course I am. I mean--” doubt sweeps through him-- “if you want?” Poe usually does want, but it's true that this is an unprecedentedly public place for them.

“You kidding? It's the dream.”

He wonders which parts of it belong in the dream, himself, the hangar, the chill air, the porg nests high in the rafters, the X-wing with the little droid still burbling their way through the maze of combat circuitry, but he's already lowering himself to the floor again and pulling Poe's shirt up to kiss his stomach, dampen the hair there with trails of spit, working at belt buckle and fly-button. “You want me to get that,” Poe pants, reaching down, and Finn kisses and sucks on his fingertips, and then on the tip of his cock through his underdrawers as it's revealed—sucks hard, wetting the fabric, listening for Poe's hissed inhale and peeling the fabric away only when he hears it.

Finn loves Poe's dick, loves the slight backcurve and the velvet foreskin he tugs at now with his lips, loves how it mirrors in miniature all of Poe's reactions, quivering and leaping to the touch, straining and seeking. Loves the way it feels bumping and thudding over his soft palate and pressing down on his tongue and making his jaw ache when he gets serious. He's dribbling spit out the sides of his mouth and Poe's grip on his shoulders is slipping, then pinching almost.

There's so much to attend to, down here, that it fills up all the spaces for wondering and separating and slipping away, crowds them with taste and pressure and sidelong gulps of air, the cool spot left by one hand when Poe, from the sound of him, raises it to his own mouth to mute the echo, his little jerks and tremors and then finally the hot, soupy rush over the back of Finn’s tongue, a long hovering pause, Poe sinking down to him. “I don't think I can stand,” he says, “hope you're proud of yourself, buddy.”

Finn is, in fact, but that's only a small slice of what he's feeling. If what he's feeling were a pie chart—he's back to thinking again. He takes Poe's hand and places it unambiguously. They’ve had this together, uncomplicated ease with each other’s bodies, almost from the first. “Nice,” Poe murmurs, rubbing and thumbing and squeezing, “you want me to get it out for you? I bet you can come just like this.”

“Only one pair of pants,” Finn points out. “Meeting at 1940. What—oh—what time is it?”

Poe does again whatever he just did, making Finn's thighs tremble with how good it feels, with holding back against it. He says, “I mean, one way I know to make sure there’s no mess.” He sort of drapes himself along the ground, undoes Finn’s pants, breathes out a little sigh of satisfaction--Finn quivers--and noses along Finn’s shaft from tip to root, and Finn gasps and comes before Poe can even get his mouth around him, spraying Poe’s face and hair. “Shit,” he says, “I’m sorry--”

Poe’s laughing, lowers his head to kiss and lick and surround, drawing out little aftershocks, rubbing his cheek against Finn’s pubes. “Don’t be sorry,” he says, lifting his smeared face, “that was the goal, and it’s hot, you’re hot, it’s not like I mind.”

“Let me wipe you off. Is there a rag or--”

“Yeah, there’s rags everywhere,” but of course all the rags they can find are covered in engine grease. Poe takes off his sweater, takes off his undershirt, puts the sweater back on. It was part of a clothing drop last tenday and it’s too short in the sleeves.

Finn wipes Poe’s face, strips a few globs of come out of his hair,  kisses him with the sticky rag still in one hand. Weird salty-chemical taste on Poe’s lips, Poe’s arms locking around Finn’s waist to keep him there.

“No, but what time  _ is  _ it,” Finn asks after awhile, and BB-8, whom Finn had completely forgotten, chirps out the binary for “1920 hours” in entirely too chipper a register.

Poe groans. “Okay, Beeb,” he says, “Run all those again, but this time for 0.6 of baseline grav.”

A series of suspiciously fart-like noises bounce off the roof of the hangar. Poe sighs. “I should probably hit the fresher block before the meeting,” he says. “Just my face and head at least. I think there’s just time. Walk with me?”

So they walk together, in the dim mauve twilight of a Siyak night, carrying the bowls and spoons. The traces of pudding have hardened into glue, and they’ll have to be soaked and scrubbed. “I’ll do it while you get clean,” Finn offers. “I think the mess is open.”

“Okay.” Poe stops him for one more kiss. “I’ll see you there.” 

Finn walks slowly toward the mess hall doorway’s arch of blue-white light, getting his mind in order for the kinds of talking and planning and listening that are waiting for him, allocations and distractions and intentions and outcomes. This concerns the combat pilots, so they’ll be there too and he’ll get to see Poe with his friends, affirming their shared history in every exchange, shifting their understanding of each other to accommodate this new situation and structure, the people Poe--all of them--have had to become in the intervening days.

Maybe on the walk back to barracks after the meeting, they can take a detour for him to hear a little more about what Poe wants as well as what he thinks would be best--especially if they’ve already decided it’s something he can’t have. And maybe after that they can lie down together, hold each other steady as the galaxy heaves and seethes and changes, as they do in it what they can find to do.


End file.
